Technical Field
The present invention relates to techniques for accurately recognizing a turnoff from a roadway.
Related Art
A technique, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-331389, focuses on parallelism with an estimated trajectory of a subject vehicle, and detects a lane of a lower parallelism as a turn-off lane. Another technique, as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-105898, determines a turnoff based on changes in lane width.
However, the technique as described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2006-331389 may mistakenly detect a non-turnoff as a turnoff due to a large variation in the parallelism or curvature when it is difficult to estimate a shape of a road with a compound line therein having a plurality of white lines. Thus, a problem with this technique has been that a shape of a vehicle path can not be estimated accurately.
Another technique as disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2000-105898 is configured to determine the presence or absence of a turnoff based on merely one feature. Thus, this technique may also mistakenly detect a non-turnoff as a turnoff. A problem with this technique has been that a shape of a vehicle path can not be estimated accurately.
In consideration of the foregoing, exemplary embodiments of the present invention are directed to providing techniques for accurately recognizing a turnoff from a roadway.